Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Adrian Frutiger was a famous Swiss typographer and typeface designer of the 20th century. He is most famous for his development of one of the most successful typefaces in history, Univers.

Frutiger’s career in design began as a sculpturist and graphic designer after studying in Zurich. After graduating, he worked in Paris at a type foundry. He later joined two others in establishing a graphic design studio, where he worked as a freelance typographer. He devoted most of his attention to legibility, which he believed to be one of the most important aspects of typeface. He successfully created a typeface easily readable from both up close and afar.

As a result of his discontentment for the commonly used typeface Futura, Frutiger began his development of his own typeface, Univers in 1957. When it was first designed, this sans serif typeface included 21 variations. It features “optically even stroke weights and a large x-height to improve legibility.” Today, there are over 27 different variations of Univers available.

Frutiger later developed the typeface Frutiger, which is a branch off Univers.

In 1975, the Frutiger typeface was implemented on multiple signs throughout the Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris.

Univers is unique because for the first time, a number system was used to identify different styles of the typeface (example: 45 light)

The Univers grid is used to show the variations in comparison to one another. It displays 21 variations of the Univers typeface, including various weight, width, and position combinations.